The Fourteenth Night: Tainted Dreams
by DezoPenguin
Summary: Corpses being stolen, a plague of night breed attacks...how can this all relate to the experiments of an English doctor from over a hundred years ago?
1. Chapter 1

_AUTHOR'S NOTE: If, for some reason, anyone is wondering, then yes, my "within the original series" stories are also part of this "series extension" continuity. "Shades of Gray" would be somewhere around Night 6.5, "Dark Heart's Shadows" at Night 9.5, and "Carnival of Dolls" at Night 11.5. Actually, you can pretty much figure that out on your own just by tracking how competent Riho is at being a vampire in each story._

"So this is it. The house of Dr. Emmanuel Barton."

The building was Western-style, Victorian in age but with a tangle of turrets and gables that spoke of Romanticism and gothic fantasies rather than the staid conventionality of the latter years of the nineteenth century.

"I don't like this place, Shinji."

Shinji Kawamura clucked his tongue. Though only twenty-three, the habit always made him sound like a fussy old man. Louise Barton hated it.

"For Heaven's sake, Louise, it's just an old house."

Louise shivered and pulled her green cardigan more tightly around herself.

"I don't care. It's creepy."

Shinji chuckled.

"Well, I admit it is a bit odd, a rambling old Western pile and its brick-walled estate in the middle of the city. Why, if you cut those trees down"--he pointed off to his right--"you'd see nothing but skyscrapers and neon."

Louise looked around herself at what she could see of the five-acre estate, its cobbled paths and tangled lawns, the towering English oaks with their riot of autumn colors.

"It's almost obscene, to have this much space for one house. Our apartment is barely larger than my freshman dorm room."

"Your aunt could have made a fortune if she'd sold it," Shinji agreed. "Space wasn't at such a premium in 1884, especially for a close friend of the British consul. I gather it wasn't actually in the city, either, but that it was engulfed over time as the population grew."

It was strange, Louise thought. She'd been happy enough about her family's historical connections to Japan back in the States, when it had provided common ground with the handsome Japanese doctoral student. It had given her time, time to talk over coffee or pitchers of beer, time to form a bond that had led to romance. Now, though, face-to-face with the reality of that history, she was hesitant.

"You're right. Dr. Barton wanted a quiet place, private," Louise agreed.

"Getting out in the country where his only neighbors were suburban and rural Japanese who couldn't speak his language and probably had no desire to interact with the foreigner among them would certainly insure that."

He stated down the path towards the house. After a moment's hesitation, Louise followed.

She didn't stop to ask himself about Dr. Barton's need for privacy. Louise only knew the barest rumors, hints passed down in the family without any real detail behind them. Besides, Shinji hadn't asked her about that part of the story.

She didn't ask herself about that, either.

-X X X-

The young man growled hideously, then bent and ripped a chunk out of the pavement at his feet. It must have weighed a good thirty pounds, but he showed no hesitation as he snapped it through the air like a discus.

Tatsuhiko Shido could have dodged the missile easily, but the crowds below the overpass could not. Injury was certain, death probably.

Fortunately, Shido did not have to dodge.

He raised his right hand to his lips and bit down on his forefinger. Droplets of blood welled up, spilling into his palm. The power of a vampire was in and of the blood, and Shido knew how to use that power to his advantage. The blood drops swelled, merging and extending until Shido held the ornate hilt of a crimson-hued sword. A sweep of his arm met the chunk of pavement in midflight; the vampire's strength and the bloodsword's power combined to blast the missile into a cloud of gray dust.

"Is that the best you can do, night breed?" he challenged the creature. The night breed was strong; it had given its human host physical power to nearly rival Shido's own, but in a battle against a fellow dweller of the night purely physical power wasn't nearly enough. It sprang at Shido, slashing out with elongated fingers like claws, but the vampire parried the attack with the bloodsword, striking aside what guard it had--which wasn't much. The night breed was fighting like an animal, barely sentient, only a beast driven by appetite and instinct.

It proved almost too easy for Shido to slash a killing blow across the breed's abdomen. The host staggered and fell, but Shido had done this too many times to think it was the end. The breed would rarely cling tightly to a host unable to sustain it, but would abandon it and flee for its life. This one kept to pattern, its natural form flowing like deep indigo gel from the corpse's nose, mouth, and the gaping wound in its torso, then started to slide away.

Shido bit his finger once again and snapped his hand outwards, spraying the drawn blood. The drops arrowed like glowing missiles to strike the liquid form of the breed. Even a low-power breed like this one had no vital organs that a conventional weapon could harm, but the power of Shido's vampire blood was a different matter entirely. The breed was consumed with an azure flame, charring to a fine gray ash in seconds.

"Hardly worth my time," he murmured.

"You're not going to go all 'I must seek a worthy challenge to bring my life meaning' on me, are you?"

Shido glanced at the tiny, green, bat-winged figure that hovered next to his left shoulder. Neither vampire nor breed, Guni was an urban fairy who had attached herself to Shido when he'd first come to this city some years ago. Her sarcastic attitude and demonic appearance was not the stuff of pretty storybook elves, but it was fitting enough for the city.

"No, Guni," he said with a smile. "I only meant that the human NOS agents could have stopped this breed on their own, without my help."

"You'd better not tell Yayoi that, or else she might decide she doesn't need your services. Then where would we be? I'm the only one of us that doesn't have to fasten onto someone else's neck every so often, you know."

"Then why are you the only one complaining?" Shido asked reasonably. In fact, it was sufficiently reasonable that Guni didn't have an answer ready for him.

Wonders never ceased.

"Come on, Guni. Let's go see if Yayoi has any further need of us tonight."

-X X X-

The sun was still streaming through the Venetian blinds on Shido's office window when Yayoi Matsunaga walked in. Shido hadn't expected to see the beautiful, dark-haired NOS agent for a few days after he'd finished off the breed on the walkway, but here she was, the very next evening, and not even waiting for sunset.

"Ms. Yayoi!"

"Hi, Riho. How are you doing?"

Shido's assistant grinned shyly. She looked to be around sixteen or seventeen, with a face that was more cute than beautiful and her hair tied up with an oversized bow and left to fall in a foxtail to her waist. She actually was nearly as young as she looked, but she'd still look exactly the same in another decade, or another century, because Shido had been forced to turn her into a vampire to save her life.

It had been a decision he'd made in a matter of seconds. It had taken months, however, for him to realize that Riho had not asked him to change her because she was afraid of dying. Rather, it had been that she feared being parted _from him_ that made her ask, that what he'd dismissed as a young girl's crush when he thought of it at all was much more.

"Mr. Shido says I'm getting better at using my vampire abilities," she said. "I hope that soon I'll be a real help in the field."

"That would be a nice change," Guni sniped.

"And what do you know, you pipsqueak?" Riho shot right back. Yayoi chuckled at the byplay, and it gave Shido a quiet smile as well. They'd become family, this little group he'd almost accidentally gathered around himself, and it felt good after so many years of carefully avoiding emotional entanglements.

He'd learned all too well that love could be a doorway to pain; sooner or later, it seemed, one had to walk through. For a human, it was possible for the span of their mortal life to run out before "later" came, but for an eternal vampire...Shido had learned that lesson brutally.

_Cain._

He shoved aside the thought of the vampire who'd made him, who'd been his teacher, master, and lover, with a violence that surprised even himself. Cain had no place in this new life he'd made for himself, and even if things led to a parting in the future he was not going to let past sorrows close him off from the future. There was no point in working so hard to keep a human heart if one was never to use it.

"So what brings you down today, Yayoi?" he asked. It was hard to brood while talking about work.

"It's last night's case. There were some unusual features to it."

"I thought it was only a low-level breed?" Riho asked, curiously.

"It was, so far as I know," Shido agreed.

Yayoi nodded.

"That's actually part of the surprise."

She set a slim black attache case down on Shido's oversized desk and opened it.

"We were able to identify the host as Yuji Shinohara. He'd been arrested for drug possession, so his fingerprints were in the system. That's how we learned his identity, since there was no identification on the corpse."

"How is that significant? I presume he was dead when the breed took him?" Shido asked.

While the night breeds differed widely in strength, appearance, and powers, they all had one thing in common, or at least the ones Shido encountered had. They wanted to attain the light, to live in the sunlit half of existence, not just the dark. The only way they could do that was by possessing a human body. The weakest could only force themselves on a corpse, which had no animating soul to fight it off. Stronger breeds could possess an unconscious living person, a vastly better solution for the breed because the living shape would not distort irrevocably into a monster. The worst of them in Shido's mind, though, were the ones that would answer the hopes and dreams of people in a kind of devil's bargain. These breeds drew their host down into the darkness, eventually cementing the bond between them so deeply that the breed could not be forcibly exorcized from its victim.

There hadn't been any of that the night before. The young man had been dead, beyond all pain and suffering when the breed had taken his form. It had assumed only the abandoned shell of a human spirit, which was the reason Shido had attacked the host ruthlessly, rendering it unusable by the animating breed.

"Yes, which is why he carried no identification. People are rarely buried with a wallet."

"Buried?"

"Shinohara died from virulent pneumonia; his body was apparently stolen from the funeral home before embalming could take place." She took a file out of her attache case and set the report before Shido.

"Big deal," Guni said. "The body was just lying there and some breed walked off with it--well, _in_ it would be a better way to describe it. We've seen it a dozen times. It's kind of creepy for friends and family, but nothing special."

Shido, however, was looking at the date of the police report on the missing body.

"It's not that simple, Guni."

"Howcome?" Guni and Riho clustered around the desk so they could see, too.

"Shinohara's body was reported missing by the funeral home over two weeks ago," Shido explained. "You have sharp eyes, Yayoi."

"I don't understand, Mr. Shido. Why would that make a difference?"

"It's too long, Riho. A dead body infected by a breed begins to change and distort to reflect the nature of the creature that possesses it. The process only takes a few days, a week at most, before it starts being an obvious monster. The breed I fought last night was nowhere near that stage. Likewise, it could not restrain its hunger, its urge to feed for that long."

"We haven't had the pattern of incidents to go along with a two-week possession," Yayoi confirmed. "In fact, this breed made only one kill, so far as we could determine. The local police actually did their job and reported the murder to the NOS so we could stop it before more people died."

"So if the breed has only had the body for a few days, who took it from the funeral home?" Riho asked.

"Not to mention, who kept it in a state of preservation? A breed can only possess a corpse if it's relatively intact. After a week and a half, the decay might be too advanced, under ordinary circumstances, for the body to be useable." He glanced up at Yayoi. "Someone has been playing games."

"Do you think that the...body-snatcher...has anything to do with the night breed, or that it was just coincidence the breed picked that body?"

"Coincidences," the vampire detective told her, "are a bit like we night walkers. We're obviously out there, but it's devilishly hard to find people who have actually seen one."


	2. Chapter 2

_1883_

_England_

David Milton was puffing for breath as he pulled himself up the last of the irregularly-set stone blocks euphemistically referred to as steps.

"Really, Barton, don't you think your ancestors could have made it a little easier to get to their front door?"

Emmanuel Barton, M.D., PhD., etc., laughed heartily.

"Milton, the point of a watchtower is to be difficult to get up to. Can't have those Yorkist dogs swarming the walls and charging down the gate, can we?"

"Yes, but really, it's like climbing the side of a pyramid, only it doesn't all go in the same direction." Milton brushed at his trouser legs, trying to get some of the dirt and dust off.

"The cost of privacy, my friend. When a man wants to work alone, in this day of telegrams and express trains it's not so easy as you might think. Here, no commercial traveler will be able to interrupt me unless he can lay siege guns against my door."

"That seems somewhat excessive even for someone in sales," conceded Milton. "And I certainly must admit that I'm all the more interested in whatever work you're doing here that requires all this privacy."

Barton laughed again and rubbed his hands together.

"Something fantastic, Milton, something that will shatter the scientific community as thoroughly as did Newton or Galileo."

"Well, you always were full of confidence. Tell me more."

"Better that I _show_ you, or else you'll never believe me."

"It's _that_ astonishing?"

"Milton," he said with complete honesty, "if someone had come to me and told me this was possible, I'd have called them insane, perhaps run for my life from a dangerous lunatic."

A shudder ran through the other man. Barton's earnestness had apparently convinced him of the literal truth of what he said. That truth, though, obviously made Milton nervous.

"You shouldn't talk like that."

"Facts are facts," Barton replied with a shrug. "It's unscientific to think otherwise. A researcher can't stick his head in the sand and pretend that his studies have no consequences. This is the real world, after all, not a conveniently-plotted Gothic novel."

"Gothic?"

"You find my comparison curious?"

"Well, yes, I do."

Barton laughed again.

"Look around you, Milton. A gray stone tower atop a craggy tor, desolate woodlands in every direction, the sky streaked purple and gold by the approaching night, while inside lurk the fruits of a mysterious experiment of potentially revolutionary proportions. And you say it isn't Gothic?"

His guest's smile returned.

"I suppose my sister could get three or four volumes of chills and shivers out of it, at that. Is there a ghost to add spice?"

"No ghosts need apply, I'm afraid. There's nothing but medical research in here."

He took an oversized iron key from his pocket and turned it in the lock, then opened the heavy door. The lock was comparatively new--only a hundred years old. Before then, the tower guards would have kept the door closed with the heavy bar and thick chains that rested to one side. Barton found an ordinary lock quite adequate for his purposes, and besides, he could only imagine the reaction he'd get if the local vicar paid a call and found the door sealed by bars and chains!

"The laboratory's at the top; it's really the only room fit for habitation."

Milton sighed.

"More stairs. Oh, well, at least these genuinely are stairs and not an exercise in rock-climbing."

Barton took a lantern from a wall hook and struck a vesta to light it.

"Watch your step," he advised his guest. "The stairs are sound enough, but old and cracked in places, and there's no railing to grab onto."

He led the way up the winding stairway, which ran around the outside wall of the tower. Single doors pierced the staircase's inner wall at regular intervals, leading to long-disused rooms, while the outer wall was pierced by narrow windows, more arrow slit than anything else. The twilight gave an odd dichotomy to these windows; on one side of the tower there was still the palely-lit countryside beneath the brilliantly colored sky, while on the other a pitchy darkness had already descended. Barton's experiments naturally made him think of dualities, light and dark, virtue and vice, life and death.

The stairs did not come to a door on the tower's highest story but simply rose through an open trapdoor in the floor. There was roof access, but only through a separate staircase on the far side of the room, this one in an iron spiral of considerably more modern pedigree. Barton went about the room, lighting several good lamps before extinguishing the lantern and hanging it near the top of the stairs for the return trip.

"Well, this is more like it!" Milton said enthusiastically, admiring the parquet floors, the bookcases lining the walls, and the modern furnishings. Several tables were surmounted by chemical apparatus, and in some places the bookcases had been replaced by machinery, electrical devices featuring a variety of switches, gauges, and coils. Although the equipment was certainly beyond Milton's knowledge--some of it Barton's own designs--it was obviously modern and of fine quality.

"My great-uncle had this room refurbished at the beginning of the century, with an eye for making the tower into a private retreat or lodge. I adopted it myself, adding the laboratory equipment and experimental devices, but the basic design was his. I found it made for the perfect combination of privacy and comfort."

"I see."

Barton laid his hand on one of the machines.

"I've even had electricity laid on for these purposes."

"Electricity!" It was a new science, not one commonly practiced, and certainly not in such remote locations.

"Yes, not a generator, but a battery system of my own design. Storms are common in this country, and an arrangement of lightning rods channels their incredible power to be stored and used later. Used by these!" He indicated the machines with a sweep of his arm.

"I'm certainly impressed, Barton, but what does it all do? What is the groundbreaking work that you want me to see?"

"And to think, Milton, I never thought to see you this enthusiastic about anything other than the latest rugby match," Barton joked. "Well, come with me."

He led the way to the center of the room, where three tables were set out side by side. The surfaces were made of copper and fitted with connectors to wires. These, in turn, ran across the floor to the electrical equipment. Barton had arranged things so that the room could be crossed and recrossed without having to get tangled up in the cables.

"What would you say, Milton, if I told you that I was on the verge of discovering the secret of life itself?"

"The secret of life?" his guest asked. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean just that, the ability to create life from death, here, in this laboratory."

Milton boggled at him.

"You mean like in _Frankenstein_?"

Barton laughed again, but this time there was a mocking undertone to it.

"Really, and you said you couldn't see the Gothic sensibility of it all? Milton, you surprise me. No, I do not mean 'like _Frankenstein_.' I have no interest in generating some kind of superior race of man, or of proving that life can be created by other than God. I assure you, there is not some hideous mockery of humanity assembled from bits and pieces from rifled graves waiting somewhere."

The other man grinned back, as if he was sharing the joke at his own expense, but it was a nervous laugh, uncertain of himself.

"That's good to hear."

_Typical_, Barton thought scornfully. A man tried to explain an astonishing discovery, conducted along completely scientific principles, and in return he got bogey stories and phantasms as a _first_ response.

"I'm talking about life, human life, as we are now. Have you never hoped to try to extend your own life's span? To assure yourself of the Biblical threescore and ten at the least instead of risking it be cut short by accident or disease? Medieval alchemists--the founders of European science--devoted generations to the search for the Elixir of Life. They hoped for immortality, a futile dream but an enlightening one."

He crossed over to the machines and began to adjust dials and levers. Gauges flickered; from certain devices a soft humming began.

"We are conceived--alive. We grow within the womb and are born--alive. We mature from infant to child, child to adolescent, adolescent to adult--alive. We age and live our allotted span. Yet all too often, unnatural death intervenes. Disease, accident, violence, any manner of cause. Witness that word, Milton. _Unnatural_ death. It is not part of God's plan for us, but a fate visited on us by our own sins. It is an aberration, an error--_and errors can be corrected_.

"Barton...if this is about Miss Trelawney..."

"Of _course_ it is about Victoria!" he rounded on his guest. "If I'd known then what I know now... It took my own loss, my own suffering to start me on this path. It's too late for me, but how many others need _not_ endure what I did?"

Milton stared at him, wide-eyed.

"For God's sake, Barton, what are you saying?"

"I am saying that I have discovered a cure for death!"

Shuddering, Milton took a step back, unconsciously distancing himself from the other man.

"I'd studied the old alchemical works diligently, but in light of modern science it was obvious that they'd taken a dead-end path," Barton hurriedly rushed on. He _had_ to make the other man understand. This wasn't some insane pipe-dream; it was scientific fact, proven with laboratory analysis and experiment. "They were only taking the first halting steps in chemistry and biology, and still believed too much in magical forces. Then, I found _this_."

He sprang to one of the bookcases and took an ornately decorated scroll-case from a shelf.

"It's a Japanese manuscript, the _Kurai Tsuki no Hon_, a treatise on their alchemical science. They came at the problems from a completely different philosophical and historical perspective. There was the same ignorance of our newest discoveries, of course, but the direction was there. All it took was modern advances to take the last steps." It had been so _easy_, once he'd started reading. Virtually every chapter in the scroll seemed to have shed new light on his dream, as if someone had been there, whispering answers to him, sparking new inspirations, links between the old and the new. "I've produced a working theory as to how this can be done. I've tested it, and while it still needs refinement, the results have been astonishing."

"Tested? Results? Barton, are you saying that you've...raised the dead? Here, in this room?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes."

"You're insane," Milton whispered.

_Idiot. Why did you even hope for something better?_

"No, Milton, not insane. I'd be insane if I made such a claim without evidence, without proof. If I expected that my word alone would be enough to open your mind to radical new ideas, whole new ways of thinking."

Again Milton seized upon specific words, plucking them from what the doctor had said as if they were gold nuggets plucked from dirt.

"You said...evidence? Proof?"

"Of course. Why do you think I brought you _here_? Good heavens, man, if all I wanted to do was to tell the story I could have done that in a comfortable chair over brandy and cigars."

Milton had gone a pasty white, almost green from fear.

"Then you mean to... Tonight?"

Barton nodded.

"I mean to take an important step forward tonight in my researches. The next phase of the experiment is due. If all goes well, you'll see with your own eyes what it is I am so excited over, see and believe. Just think of it, Milton. Someday, someday soon if things keep proceeding as they have thus far, premature death will be a thing of the past. We'll all be modern Lazaruses, able to cheat death--no, to keep death from cheating _us_ of our due span."

"What do you mean to do?"

"Thus far I have been able to restore animation to individual body parts, so that they act even in the absence of direct galvanic stimulation." He did not give Milton time to think that over, since even the most mundane medical researches tended to revolt and disgust laymen, but hurried on. "The next phase is to apply these principles to an entire body."

"A body?"

"Precisely."

He nodded towards the far side of the room where, partially obscured by the roof staircase, there was a wheeled gurney on which a shrouded form lay. It had gone unnoticed by Milton all this time, no doubt because no one expected to find corpses lying around a laboratory. Now, though, the body was obvious, impossible to miss. Barton could see the effect of it on the other man at once, the superstitious awe that the mere presence of death seemed to instill in those who had not had to perform autopsies and dissections to earn a medical degree.

"T-this is madness, Barton! Insanity!"

He gave Milton a withering look.

"No, Milton, it is science. Are you actually afraid?"

Barton began to wheel the corpse over to the copper tables.

"Where did that come from?" Milton asked, pointing with a shaky had.

"You are aware that a certain number of corpses are procured each year by the medical schools as anatomical specimens?"

"You're not saying that you obtained it from a school, that some official powers-that-be have sanctioned your research?"

"I hate to crush your hope, but of course not. No so-called legitimate institution would touch this. Too speculative, they'd say. Too outrageous, they would say. Did say! But the same people who once supplied nearly all England's medical specimens still practice today, though in a reduced capacity."

"You mean resurrection men. Body-snatchers. My God!"

"You cringe in terror. But really, what did you expect? Radical breakthroughs always come at a cost. Besides which, by the end of my work, these so-called victims of grave robbery will be ecstatic to have been exhumed. After all, what is that compared to new life?"

"You're mad!"

"In a few moments, you will see quite plainly that I am not."

"No!" Milton shouted defiantly. "No, Barton; I won't be a party to this. Alchemy and pagan rites? Grave robbery and resurrecting the dead? How can you call this medicine, science? It's sheer lunacy, that's what it is, lunacy and nothing else!"

"I thought you were a friend, someone I could trust. Would you condemn me without proof?"

"I have all the proof I need from your own lips!" Milton shouted back.

"Fine, then! Go and run away like a spineless coward. When my results are published, you'll see what a fool you were, to have thrown away decades of friendship out of sheer, pigheaded doubt."

"When your results--" Milton said, staring at the doctor in wide-eyed astonishment. "Do you truly think I'll let this continue? That I would allow you to keep on robbing graves, carving up bodies and performing ghastly experiments on them? I'll not let this go on another day, another moment!"

Milton's gaze swept the area around him and fixed upon a heavy iron pole that could be used to block the trap door. While Barton could only stare in complete bewilderment, the enraged man sprang to the pole, swept it up, and brought it crashing down upon the nearest machine.

"Milton, no, don't!" Barton cried, but it was too late. The machine was one of those he'd turned on and it was alive with electricity. Milton's furious strength drove the bar deep into the machine's heart and the bar channeled crackling, sparking power into the man, wreathing him in electric flame. Milton fell to the parquet, stone dead.

For long minutes Barton merely stared in astonishment at what had been wrought, unable to understand what had happened. Steadily, though, scientific training began to take over, forcing him to deal with the facts as they were and not as he wanted things to be.

Milton was dead. That was the central truth, inescapable. Equally inescapable was that too many people had seen him, in the station, at the village pub, and knew he was visiting Barton. They'd had a drink together. It meant that the death could not be concealed without incurring close questioning by the police. Scandal was inevitable, publicity--everything he did not need. Before reporting the death, Barton could hide all evidence of his own criminal actions, above all disposing of his test subject, but the glare of attention would be full upon him, making it impossible to continue with his work.

There was only one solution. Once the inquest was over, Barton would have to leave the country. Only abroad could he hope to continue his research away from public attention, from the censure of those who would imagine only the worst upon reading that his friend had been driven to smash his equipment from fear and outrage.

Barton turned his gaze instinctively to the manuscript of the _Kurai Tsuki no Hon_. Why not? Japan was on the far side of the world. No one would know or even care about his past, and perhaps he could even discover more to help his work. After all, only fragments of their lore had made it to England for Barton to discover. _Go_, a voice seemed to be telling him. _What more might you learn at the source?_

Perhaps this was not a setback at all. Perhaps fate had instead handed him an opportunity in disguise. It was not as if there was any point in remaining. Milton had been a friend, and he'd reeled with superstitious revulsion. There was no reason to assume any others, strangers, would be any better-inclined towards his work.

No, there was nothing to be gained from remaining. The scientific community of Europe could only be approached when the work was finally, fully complete. In Japan, he could take the final steps, and bring about a whole new era.

"Thank you, Milton," he told the dead man. "Though you had no idea what you were doing, it will be because of you that my dreams come to fruition."


	3. Chapter 3

There were two more breed incidents that night. One was handled by NOS field agents, called in after police tried to roust what looked to be a vagrant in tattered clothes. Two officers were killed before the NOS arrived, emphasizing how helpless normal law enforcement was when dealing with the supernatural. Shido took care of the other breed personally, with no more trouble than he'd had the last time.

"Three breeds in two days," he told Yayoi when she picked him up after the job. "It's like we have a plague of the walking dead on our hands."

"That might be exactly the case. Take a look at that file on the dashboard."

Even though it was almost two in the morning, the city was still alive with a riot of electric light and artificial color. Armed with science, humanity had forged into the darkness, claiming it, too, as their own. It was a far cry from Shido's early days as a vampire in Transylvania. Then, the night was the domain of those that belonged there, to the true monsters and to those humans who might as well have been. Anyone else ventured into the dark only at great risk.

Thinking of the two police officers killed by the breed, Shido supposed that not all that much had changed.

He took the file off the dashboard while Yayoi started the car.

"What is this?"

"It's a cross-correlation of body-snatching incidents. You get them once in a while--grotesque pranks, perversions, organlegging if they can get to the body in time, sales for medical research. There have been six reported incidents, though, in the last month in this city. That's way over the average."

"Were the local police grandstanding again?" Shido wondered. More than once in the past, the local force had held back key data from the NOS, in the hope of gaining prestige instead of having to turn their investigation over to the national agency.

"No; this is a little creepy, but there was no sign of breed involvement with any of it until the Shinohara connection came up. The locals had no obligation to report, not until I specifically asked for the data. Thanks to computers, they came across fast."

Shido opened the file and examined the reports of the six incidents of corpse theft. Shinohara's was on top, and he skimmed the details before moving on to the next.

"I can see why the police didn't report these to the NOS," he admitted. "The crime scenes all appear to be the work of human thieves. Experts who didn't leave behind significant evidence, but nothing supernatural like a night breed. Locks were picked or forced, alarms disconnected, and in one case a watchman blackjacked." Then he reached the forth report and his eyebrows raised. "Yayoi, this is the body used by the breed I just killed."

"Uh-huh, and the sixth one is the one from earlier this evening. It looks like we were right about there being no coincidences."

"So why would bodies stolen by human thieves end up being possessed by breeds?"

"It's a good question, and that's what we're on our way to find out. These weren't amateur jobs, and bodysnatching isn't exactly a common field in the criminal underworld. Somebody had to know something, and I think I know just the man."

"Oh?"

"Hajime Noguchi. He's _yakuza_, one of the city's top underbosses. If there's an organized gang specializing in body theft, he'll know about it. The only question is, will he talk? That's why I want you with me."

"Are you afraid he'll get violent?"

She shook her head.

"Oh, no. Noguchi is very civilized and very professional. He wouldn't start trouble with a federal agent. There would be no point. He has no reason to talk to me, though, so if I can't charm him into it I want somebody who can threaten Noguchi with more than an arrest that would end up looking worse on my record than on his. You can be a very scary guy when you want to be, Shido."

He tossed his head, letting his long hair settle into place around his shoulders.

"I prefer to think of myself as debonair and alluring."

Yayoi laughed.

"Save it for Riho."

Shido smiled back. Yayoi was a beautiful woman who enjoyed the effect her appearance had on others, moreso because she'd grown up badly disfigured by severe burns and only as an adult had the damage repaired, but she turned it off at once when business intervened. Watching her deal with Hajime Noguchi would be a decided pleasure.

-X X X-

"Shinji?" Louise called, rapping gently on the study door. "Shinji, I brought you a cup of tea."

There was no answer, so she knocked again, more loudly.

"Shinji?"

"Go away, Louise! I'm in the middle of some very delicate calculations and can't be disturbed!" This was followed by several mutterings she couldn't make out, as if he'd immediately started talking to himself.

Louise sighed bitterly. Every week they stayed in their new house, Shinji became more and more of a recluse. He'd started out enthusiastically enough, poking into every nook and cranny of the old building, but after that... It was as if the Barton mansion had put a spell on the young man; he'd become even worse than during the final week before his master's thesis had been due. Louise understood the lure of research well enough, being a microbiology student herself, but there were limits. The only times she got to see Shinji any more were for meals and sleep--and sometimes not even then.

"What am I going to do?" she whispered softly to herself.

-X X X-

Eternity Kiss Kiss was one of any number of clubs that tried to distinguish itself with a slightly out of synch English name. Neon pink and pastel blue were the lighting of choice, generally in rotating signs and scrolling bars across the ceiling that gave the club a weird, otherworldly quality. Music filled the atmosphere like a tangible force, the bass cranked to such levels that Shido could feel the drumbeats pulsing through him. He and Yayoi made their way through crowds of young twentysomethings who danced with manic energy, as if they were desperately trying to capture some level of exaltation that lay just outside their soul's reach. He found it all vaguely sad.

The frenzy was shut out, however, when the club manager's door shut behind them. Fairly adequate soundproofing all but silenced the music to human ears, though the faint vibrations of the percussion still transmitted themselves through the walls and floor. The decor was sleek and stylish, with black predominating and none of the bright lights of the club outside. The two hard men, _yakuza kobun_, who flanked the door might as well have been part of that decor. To Shido, they were irrelevant. One made a move to take Yayoi's gun and she snapped her badge open in his face so sharply that it would have clipped his nose had he not jerked his head back in the last instant.

"Noguchi, you really need to train your flunkies better," she said.

Hajime Noguchi, manager of Eternity Kiss Kiss and underboss of the Takeda-_gumi_, was not a prototypical gangster. He was short, clean-shaven, and rotund, with a beaming smile and laughing eyes that made him look like someone's favorite uncle. The eyes, especially, impressed Shido; lying with them was quite a trick. So often humans could put on charming smiles but their inner darkness showed through in cold, dead eyes.

Noguchi laughed and shrugged.

"What can I do? It's so hard to find young men these days who want a job requiring anything as unfashionable as a suit. Good evening, or perhaps good morning, Agent Matsunaga. I don't believe I've met your associate before?"

"Mr. Shido assists me upon occasion."

"He must be quite an energetic fellow if he keeps pace with you."

"I try to be useful."

"Most men do, for Agent Matsunaga. Which of course leads to the question of how I can be of service, for I'm sure this is no social call at this unholy hour."

"I don't know," Yayoi murmured. "I think grave robbing is a very natural topic for two in the morning."

"Grave robbing?" He looked and sounded genuinely surprised. Not that Shido expected Noguchi to know what Yayoi was going to ask, but it took the vampire off-guard that Noguchi showed any of his thoughts so openly.

"Well, not someone going out with picks and shovels, but there are dead bodies being stolen."

Noguchi looked up at her in surprise, then mastered himself.

"Ah, yes, you NOS agents are assigned to investigate the strange and perverse, aren't you?" He glanced at Shido and asked affably, "What's it like, working with a woman who considers grave robbery all in a day's work?"

"I've never been one with a taste for the ordinary."

"Indeed."

"Oh, yes, Shido's...taste...is definitely unusual," Yayoi said, "but that's really not the point, is it?"

"Do you have a point? I certainly hope you do not think of me in the same breath as the depraved individuals who would want dead bodies."

"Of course not--but I might add that these bodies were stolen by expert professionals."

"Pardon me?"

"I would never think of you in connection with an insane need for dead bodies, Noguchi. On the other hand, I'd certainly think of you in connection with the first-class professionals who satisfy that insane need on behalf of clients."

His eyes narrowed, and for an instant Shido could see some of what made this man dangerous.

"Excuse me, Agent Matsunaga?"

Yayoi waved a hand airily.

"Oh, not personally, but in your position I'm sure you'd come to know."

"Nightclub manager?"

"But of course. Those who walk in darkness inevitably come to know one another."

She bent over his desk, bracing her hands on the edge.

"People are being killed, Noguchi. It's the kind of thing that's bad for everyone's business. You said it yourself when you talked about what the NOS investigates. It can't be shrugged off the way day-to-day organized crime so often is. If things keep up, there'll be federal agents and local police alike crawling over everything."

"Indeed?"

"On the other hand, I'm sure an agreement can be reached. I'm a very...accommodating woman when I want to be."

It was interesting. Yayoi didn't really move, and yet her entire posture shifted from threatening to inviting. Shido suspected that Noguchi had quite a view of her cleavage, as well.

_From hard to soft in a moment, just like she'd flipped a switch._

"Just what kind of accommodation do you suggest we reach, Agent Matsunaga?"

"I'm not interested in the thieves," she said. "If they're the professionals I think they are, they're outside my jurisdiction. All I want are the clients."

"I see."

"You _will_ ask around for me, won't you?"

Noguchi bowed his head.

"It would be my privilege."

The street outside Eternity Kiss Kiss was cold and quiet, both all the more noticeable after the club. Yayoi's heels clicked briskly off the pavement as she led the way back to her car. Shido opened the door.

"How gentlemanly."

"A man likes to be useful for something."

Yayoi turned and looked back up at him from her seat.

"Shido, are you feeling snippy that Noguchi agreed to help without you having to lean on him?"

"I'm not used to being excess baggage," he confessed.

"Excess baggage?" She looked at him curiously. "Are you serious, Shido?"

He closed the door, then went around to the other side and got in.

"Let's just say I feel like I haven't been pulling my weight around here, lately. Sure, I destroyed a couple of breeds, but it's nothing you couldn't have handled, and as far as the detective work goes, that's all been you."

"Ah, so you've been wondering, just why am I keeping the blood-sucking parasite around?"

He chuckled wryly.

"Something like that."

Yayoi turned the key.

"Good," she surprised him.

"Good?"

The sports car purred sensuously, reminding Shido very much of its driver, as Yayoi pulled into traffic.

"Yes, good. Now you can have a taste of what Riho and I feel like most of the time. Or do you think it's easy for me to always go running to you to bail me out whenever one of my own cases gets too tough to handle?"

She had a point.

"Besides, tomorrow night I'm sure you'll be back to being the big, bad vampire, so for now I'm just going to enjoy it. But I'm a fair woman."

"Oh?"

She reached up and tugged down her collar.

"You can have something to enjoy, too."

-X X X-

"Shinji!" Louise knocked again. "Shinji, come to bed! It's after three in the morning!"

There was no response from behind the locked study door. It was infuriating! Louise had been worried--indeed, she still _was_ worried--but she was hurt and angry, too. It was easier to be angry than merely concerned; it gave her feelings an outlet, all the more so because she had just cause. She might be the foreigner, but this was _her_ family's house, not Shinji's. He'd just taken over as if it was his own, with scarcely a thought for her, his supposed fiancee.

Louise had had enough of it. It was time for Shinji Kawamura to pry himself out of whatever was so important to him and pay some attention to real life, or else he could damn well find his _own_ study to hide in.

Shinji had the ring of keys, but she'd kept one back from him, the house's master key. It was supposed to be for emergencies, to open any lock in the old house. This, Louise decided, qualified as an emergency. The key turned easily in the lock and the door opened.

The study was empty.

"Shinji?" she called, unable at first to believe her eyes. There was the desk where she'd seen him writing before, the hearth, the serried ranks of bookshelves. But no Shinji. It was crazy. She knew he'd gone in here, and the door had been locked. He wouldn't have locked it to keep her out even when he wasn't there, would he?

Actually, she admitted to herself, he probably would. He'd become almost fanatic about his privacy. But where would he have gone?

Then she realized that one of the bookshelves seemed slightly askew, a corner sticking out from the others. Scarcely believing it, Louise tugged on the edge of the case, and it swung outward as if hinged. Which, she realized, it was. The bookcase was actually a door with the shelves mounted on the outside of it. Behind the door was a stone staircase which descended to a landing, and a gleam of light showed from below. Louise hadn't known there was a secret passage of any kind in the house, but apparently Shinji had. Why hadn't he told her? And what was down there?

The questions made her more than a little afraid as she started down the staircase. It was seven steps to the landing, where it turned back on itself and went down another seven to a room that was part of the basement level.

This room, though, was no cellar. The floor had been stone-flagged, and old-fashioned electric lighting had been fitted up to render the room, if not pleasant, at least well-illuminated. Banks of machinery and equipment, steel surfaces spotted liberally with rust, were everywhere, sparking and crackling with electricity. It looked like nothing so much as a mad doctor's lab from an old-time horror film, and Louise had the sudden fear that what it seemed was exactly what it was.

Particularly when she saw a man's naked body stretched out on a metal table, beneath a frosted, yellow-glass globe. Shinji was wiring the body up to strange needles and electrodes.

"Shinji, what are you _doing_?" she screamed.

"Louise, get out of here!"

"I will not! What is this place? What are you doing to that man?"

"This man is dead; I'm doing nothing to harm him. Quite the opposite, in fact. I shall return him to life!"

"T-that's crazy!"

"Nothing of the kind! It was your own ancestor, Dr. Emmanuel Barton, who discovered the secret over a century ago. I found his journals three years ago; they've led me, step by step, to here. His accidental death cut off his research, but I've since continued what he'd done, recreated it and progressed _past_ it. I've made the dead live!"

_Three years ago._ In all his raving, those words were the ones that stood out for Louise. _Three years ago_ he'd found Barton's journals and begun this mad quest. _Before_ he'd met her. He'd sought her out, used her just to gain access to this house, this hidden laboratory. It couldn't be coincidence.

"You _bastard_!" she screamed. "How could you _do_ this to me? I _loved_ you, Shinji!"

He looked confused for a moment, as if he had not expected that. He probably hadn't, Louise thought, probably couldn't even imagine something other than his mad dream could matter to anyone.

"L-Louise, I--" he stammered, but he never finished. A shower of sparks burst loudly from a machine to her left and she jumped away, startled. It proved to be a fatal error; she stumbled against a bench, reached out to steady herself, and closed her hand around a live wire. Her body jerked spasmodically as current arced through her.

Shinji stared at Louise's dead body, appalled at the turn of events and at its eerie similarity to the death of David Milton that he'd read of in Dr. Barton's journal.

It hadn't been true, what she said. Yes, he'd sought her out intentionally to gain access to Dr. Barton's machines, to his experimental notes. This was the calling that had driven him, all but possessed him ever since he'd first learned of it. His original plan, though, had simply been to rent the building. He'd gone beyond that because Louise had attracted him, mind and body alike. He'd intended for her to share the glory at his side, to see her family vindicated. If only she'd trusted him, waited! It was unfair how a mere accident of emotion had cut that dream short.

But he knew how to fix that.


	4. Chapter 4

The truck hissed to a stop, steam rising from its undercarriage. The doors opened, and two men got out. They were roughly dressed, in jeans and zipped-up hooded windbreakers. The rain fell steadily, rattling off the truck's metal body.

A moment later, the headlights from a vehicle spiked through the gloom. A black Toyota sedan pulled slowly into the parking lot and drove up to the panel truck, parking beside it. From his perch atop the truck, Shido peered down as the car's door opened. A human couldn't have kept that position through the streets, but for the vampire, it was no problem.

The man who got out of the car wore black slacks and a white button-down shirt, his dark hair slicked back from his forehead. He looked entirely normal, but Shido caught something off about him at once.

_He tastes of darkness_. It was certain, now, that Noguchi had pointed them in the direction of the correct body-snatchers. Their client, this man, was connected to the night breeds.

"Well, what do you have for me tonight?" he addressed the two hooded men, rubbing his hands together.

"A nice fresh one."

"Good, good."

He continued rubbing his hands. The skin on the outside edges was peeling a bit, Shido noticed. It must have itched; the buyer raked it repeatedly with his nails.

"Hey, you're not the regular guy," said one of the body-snatchers."

"Is there a problem?"

"I don't like it when plans get changed. It usually means bad news."

The buyer took a thick envelope from his rear hip pocket and tossed it to the doubting Thomas. The graverobber caught it, tore it open, and riffed through the yen notes. He unzipped his windbreaker and tucked the payment away inside.

"Glad to see you appreciate my concerns."

"Excellent. Now, if we may proceed? This rain is so unpleasant for one's health." He smiled as if he'd said something funny.

The body-snatchers went around to the back of their truck, opened the door, and unloaded their merchandise. The body was wrapped up in white and looked only vaguely human-like, the sheet around it concealing anything that made the corpse unique or special. In a way it was appropriate. Without an abiding spirit, a corpse was just meat and bone, with particular meaning only in the memories of the living. The buyer opened the back door of his Toyota and they pushed it inside.

"Been a pleasure, pal. Same time next week as usual?"

The buyer nodded, still worrying at the edge of his hand with his nails.

"Of course."

The graverobbers turned to go back to their truck and the dark man made as if he would, to, get behind the wheel of his vehicle, but he stopped with one hand on the door. Shido's night vision caught the flexing of the buyer's nostrils, as if he was sniffing the air, sensing...what? A lurking vampire?

In a flash, Shido rolled off the far side of the truck, landing silently only a few feet behind the bodysnatcher who was getting into the cab on that side. The man never turned as Shido bounded away through the rain, taking cover on the far side of the lot, which was only to be expected. Vampiric stealth always had an edge on purely human senses. It made Shido worry about the buyer. Had he truly been scenting something? If so, how? Was he possessed by a breed, made less than human?

The truck pulled away, water spraying from its tires. Where it went wasn't his business; as Yayoi had pointed out, their morbid trade wasn't within her jurisdiction. She might or might not put the local police on to them, depending on whether she valued more her duty to the law or her promise to the _yakuza_ boss. What manner of justice awaited them was not Shido's present concern.

The Toyota and its driver were a different matter. As it turned out of the parking lot, Shido rejoined Yayoi, who had tailed the truck through more ordinary means than he had. Riho was waiting in the back seat.

"So, was Noguchi playing it straight?" Yayoi asked as Shido got in.

"It looks that way. Whomever the buyer is, he's involved with the night breeds."

The Toyota wasn't difficult to follow, despite its common color and make; the buyer seemed almost intoxicated, driving too fast, reacting to traffic signals and upcoming turns too slowly so that the car would jerk to a stop or swivel suddenly into a corner, usually from the wrong lane. Since Shido had gotten the plate number, Yayoi called it in while they followed. The vehicle was registered in the name of Shinji Kawamura, and the owner's listed address was in the general direction the car was heading.

"He's supposed to be a student, twenty-four years old," Yayoi relayed what the official records had to say about Kawamura.

"Then he can't be the buyer," Shido said. "That man was older, in his early thirties."

"An associate, then? Or maybe a family member? I'll have the agency dig up what it can on Kawamura and see if anything shows up."

"It shouldn't matter," Shido said. "We should be able to resolve this tonight."

The Toyota pulled into a residential side street, then into the driveway of a large, Western-style mansion set on an outsized estate.

"That's the right address," Yayoi said, pulling to a stop up the street on the far side.

"Shido and Riho ought to feel right at home," Guni commented. "It looks like something out of a Dracula movie."

"The creepy house, the rain...All we need is the lightning," Riho agreed.

"Just be on watch; there are real night breeds to go with the theatrical atmosphere."

Shido led the way through the open gate in the estate's brick wall, then up the path towards the house. The buyer had parked his car up the drive and gotten out. He opened the back door and took out the sheet-wrapped body, hefting it up onto one shoulder with apparent ease. He walked up to the elaborate porch and opened the door, then took the body inside.

"He didn't even take it around to a side or back door," Shido said. "Whatever is going on, it's no secret from the rest of the household."

Yayoi grinned wolfishly.

"Then I'd say we don't have to play this out subtly, do we?" She drew her gun, a specially-modified automatic loaded with the NOS's standard silver hollow-point rounds and with an underbarrel flashlight so that her aim would be in sync with her vision.

The vampires carried no such weapons. They didn't need them.

The buyer had been careless about his security. Not only had he left the gate open, but they found the door unlocked as well.

"Something's wrong," Shido said. "That man isn't thinking like a human any more." He remembered the remark the buyer had made about health that he'd somehow found funny. It would have been ironic humor, if the man's body was already dead and he was only a breed inhabiting it.

He hadn't stopped to wipe his feet, either. A trail of wet footprints led down the unlit hall, then around a corner and into a study, a small room with a writing desk and the walls lined with bookcases. One section of the shelves had swung away from the wall like a hinged door, revealing a staircase going down.

Shido had only a few moments to take in those details. With a chittering growl, a form launched itself at them from its perch on top of the bookshelves. Shido grabbed Yayoi and pulled her aside while Riho sprang the other way. The figure's clawed hand struck the parquet floor hard, cracking the polished wood and spraying off splinters.

"Another breed!" he snapped. This one looked nearly human; its blank blue eyes and massive talons were its only apparent changes from its human host's shape, that of a young blonde woman in a green dress.

Riho actually reacted faster to the threat than Shido did, since she'd only had to look after her own safety. She spun, putting her back to one of the cases, and bit down on her right forefinger. Blood welled up in the cut, twisting and hardening until it took the shape of a bloodsword like Shido's own. A mix of emotions rushed through him at the sight. He was proud of how well she was mastering the skills of her new existence, but at the same time it was balanced by pangs of sorrow at watching an innocent girl fall deeper and deeper into the darkness, all because of a momentary act of kindness he'd showed her at the love she'd developed for him.

There was fear, too, a fear that never really left him, that one day Riho would fall all the way into the dark, lose her human heart and become nothing but another monster for him to hunt. Cain had once plucked that fear from his mind, showed it to him in all its twisted glory, and the despair of it had nearly killed him. In a way, though, he owed Cain a debt of gratitude, for it had been that same vision which forced Shido to recognize that Riho's feelings for him were genuine, not a silly schoolgirl crush, and had likewise opened his eyes to the depths of his own feelings for her.

The thought of losing someone, after all, is no threat if one doesn't care for them in the first place.

Riho slashed down with her sword at the night breed, but the monster got its clawed hand back around to block the strike, talons grating against the blade. One hand was not enough, so it used its other hand as well, but still Riho forced the creature back, down to one knee. As a vampire, even a young one, she had much greater power than a low-level breed like she faced.

In desperation, the breed opened its mouth in a rictus-like grin and its tongue lashed out. It was long and flexible like a frog's, but the last foot of it at the tip was covered with barbs like rose thorns. As if it were a whip, it coiled around Riho's neck, slashing into the girl's throat as it tightened.

In the next instant the breed's advantage was destroyed as Shido's own bloodsword plunged into it from behind. With the sword piercing its body, Shido sent his power through the blade and into the night breed. Blue flames wreathed the creature in its stolen corpse, and in the next instant there was nothing left but ash.

"Riho! Are you all right?" Shido cried, taking her shoulders in his hands, trying to get a look at her wounds.

"I...I think so, Mr. Shido." She looked down at her feet. "I just can't believe that I was so stupid. I shouldn't have let it hurt me at all!" She touched her wounded throat and winced; a necklace of puncture marks ringed it, and blood had streamed from more than one in little ribbons down her neck.

"Don't worry about it. You haven't had centuries of fighting the night breeds to practice, after all." He brushed back a few stray hairs from her face, grazing the back of his fingers gently against her cheek. "Just remember that even the ones that inhabit human bodies aren't bound by that form. They pervert their host's body to suit their own nature."

He was impressed by the way she didn't seem to be frightened by the injury. Shido had killed the breed before it could inflict serious damage; to a vampire the wounds were painful but no more. Her natural healing would erase them in minutes, even faster if she had the chance to drink blood to replenish her strength.

"I'll try, Mr. Shido."

Shido led the way down the narrow staircase, followed by Yayoi and with Riho in the rear. Light streamed up from down below, so he was not expecting a dank catacomb, but the unusual laboratory was almost as strange. Antique fixtures and fittings that looked a century old were combined with crazed devices.

"It's like the set from a Frankenstein movie," Yayoi commented.

"Indeed it is," cackled a voice, that of the man who'd bought the latest body. He stood at the far side of the room, between two metal-topped tables. The skin he'd been scratching now hung in tatters from the heels and edges of his palms, revealing a smooth substance like midnight-blue glass beneath. "For here new lives are breathed into the dead flesh of corpses. A modern miracle, as this young man thought."

The breed reached down towards one of the tables, and ran his decaying hand over the naked chest of the young man lying there.

"He was very diligent in his work, performing experiments with scientific zeal. He really believed, you see, that in carrying out this work he was restoring life to deceased tissue--at least, that's what he believed until he accidentally killed his fiancee with all this dangerous electrical equipment and was not precisely pleased with his attempts at resurrection. I'm afraid I had to step in personally at that point."

"Then this place...is some kind of factory for night breeds?" Yayoi exclaimed.

"Exactly, my dear. The techniques performed here call the breeds from the darkness and provide them with ready-made hosts. I showed this house's owner how over a century ago, but I'm so pleased that someone would seek to follow in his footsteps."

"So this is your doing, then?" Shido challenged. "Not content with your own evil, you bring more of your murderous kind here to prey on humans?"

"I seek to offer my kind shelter and protection in the light. Do you not also propagate your own, and teach and shelter your spawn...vampire?" he said with a meaningful glance at Riho.

"Don't you _dare_ compare Riho to your filthy kind!" Shido snapped, then raked his hand across his fangs and sprayed the blood droplets towards the breed with a flick of his wrist. The bloodmissiles were stopped in mid-air, though, by a shimmering blue aura that sprang up around the breed. The breed then waved his hand, and a surge of force seemed to rush outward from the barrier, ignoring the laboratory equipment but slamming into the three intruders with such impact that even Shido was knocked down.

"Please don't be hasty," the breed said. It scratched at the back of its right hand, sloughing off more skin to reveal the blue glass "flesh" beneath. "You've spent what must have been considerable effort to find me. The least I can do is provide you with a demonstration."


	5. Chapter 5

"I have to say, it's a same to have to stop these experiments just when they were going so well," the night breed said in its offhand, almost chatty fashion. "Unfortunately, without Kawamura's bank accounts there's no source of money with which to continue obtaining bodies, and this host is losing its human semblance too quickly for me to be able to maintain the facade in front of others."

This was something which Shido had seen before. When a night breed made a contract with a living human, sharing the body, years or even decades could pass without any overt corruption of the form. The body would appear human when the human will was ascendant and take on breed characteristics while the breed possessed it. An inhabited corpse was different, though. It would steadily become more monstrous as its flesh became corrupted by the nature of the breed. Low-level breeds were often caught out long before that point, as they lacked real sentience and acted largely on instinct, but even a breed as intelligent and powerful as the one that had tempted Kawamura could not hold back the inevitable physical effects.

"Still, at least two more of my spawn will be able to attain the light, and who knows what the future may hold? The Dark Moon tempts all."

He wheeled Kawamura's body into the center of the room, directly beneath an articulated arm that ended in a yellow-tinted globe of frosted glass. The breed placed his hand against the globe and it began to glow, a tracery of faint red lightnings beginning to flow along its surface. Shido understood at once. The equipment, all the mad-scientist machinery, was no more than window dressing. It existed to confuse the breed's victims, the people it had seduced into doing its work with the promise of an astonishing medical breakthrough. They would think that they were crossing new thresholds of science, when instead they were dealing purely with the supernatural.

"Shido..." Yayoi said, "If he does this..."

_We'll have that many more breeds to deal with._ He knew exactly what she was saying--and she was right.

"Riho and I will deal with the breed. You stop the machine."

The night breed laughed.

"Really, vampire, you should pay more attention. I just told you that it isn't a machine--and as for stopping me, didn't you just see what happened to you when you tried that?"

His blue-glass hands seemed to shine as if lit from within, casting a sickly aura like the color of a drowned man's face. The air rippled as another surging wave burst out from the breed at Shido, but the vampire was ready for it this time. He leapt aside, and the sound of squealing metal and cascading sparks testified that the attack had struck one of the machines. Softly, he heard the crackle of flames as sparks caught the wood.

Riho lunged at the breed, bloodsword in hand, but it was faster than she expected, lashing out with another wave of force. She parried with the bloodsword, deflecting much of the breed's power with her own, but it still drew a grunt from her.

Yayoi scrambled for where her gun had fallen even as the red lightning suffusing the globe began to grow, sparks swelling in brightness and beginning to stretch up the chrome steel arm towards the ceiling. Shido, meanwhile, bit his finger and called up his bloodwhip, lashing out at the breed even while Shido was still in mid-dodge. The whip snaked around it, and Shido sent his own power surging down the coil. Blue flame erupted wreathing the night breed in a blazing cocoon.

Yayoi's fingers closed around her gun and she rolled, sighting down the barrel at the glass globe which seemed to be the focal point of the apparatus. The red lightning was rushing up and down the arm, arcing to the ceiling and spreading outwards in a circular pattern, making it look almost like the globe was the tip of an inverted pyramid of scarlet energy. Suddenly, Shido could feel resistance against his own power, the force he was pouring into the whip. A moment later, the blue flame was extinguished and the whip blasted apart. Yayoi fired, but the same barrier that had stopped Shido's bloodmissiles sprang into existence, blocking the three shots.

"It won't be _that_ easy!" keened the breed, its voice high-pitched and unnatural. The reason was obvious; the bloodwhip's flame had seemingly burned off the shell of humanity, as if the corpse the breed possessed was a kind of chrysalis in which it had grown. The entire body seemed to be made of the same blue glass as its hands. It had four legs, two growing from each hip, with an extra joint in each like an animals, ending in hooked talons. Though the host had been male, the breed's torso was prominently female, with four breasts in two rows of two. The face was insectlike, with a vertical slit of a mouth that opened sideways, framed by a mandible each at top and bottom.

The creature spun just as Riho leapt at it from behind, swinging her bloodsword in a lethal arc. The breed raised its left hand and caught the blade, a flash of violet light marking the clash of its power and hers. It then lunged with its right hand while Riho fought to free her sword. Shido could see the move coming, and realized that Riho did not even before the vampire girl seemed to know she was under attack. Like a blade, the tips of the breed's fingers pierced her abdomen, and blood sprayed as she was impaled to the elbow on its arm.

"Riho!"

The crimson lightning burst from the glass globe and blasted down at the body, playing over the corpse of Shinji Kawamura. The corpse began to twitch spasmodically, and its eyes opened, revealing that they were shining with a sickly azure glow.

"_Riho!_" Shido screamed as the breed casually flung the vampire girl aside, her blood dripping from its arm. Calling up his own bloodsword, he charged it, slashing down with tremendous power. The breed tried the same trick twice, trying to catch the blade, but Shido was much more powerful than Riho and his anger lent him even more strength. The breed's fingers closed around the blade, but then its hand fractured and shattered. It reeled back, bluish ichor dripping from the stump.

In his fury Shido was barely aware of Yayoi's gun going off as she took advantage of the breed's momentary lapse. The silver bullets punched into the skull of the corpse, blowing it apart and rendering it impossible for the breed to use. Perhaps it was the fact that it was caught in transition, or perhaps the breed was just too weak to stand the shock of losing its host, but rather than make an escape from the body it inhabited it was destroyed along with it.

Shido cared about none of it. Instead, he relentlessly pressed his attack, going all-out against the parent night breed. He put everything he had into each swing, all but ignoring how the creature tried to grapple with its forelegs or make some kind of counterattack. His relentless fury shielded him, though, as the constant assault made it impossible for the breed to mount any truly effective response, so overwhelmed was it by the need to defend.

At the end, though, it was to no avail. As it reeled away from yet another blow, Shido swung his sword in a powerful horizontal arc, slashing the breed in two just above the waist. The severed halves fell to the floor and shattered, spraying slivers of glass everywhere.

Shido dropped to his knee, exhausted by the effort and the emotional shock--but there was still Riho to think of. Would she be all right? A vampire's power of regeneration was astonishing, and there was a chance even still...He turned, half-rising, and was astonished to see her standing, though leaning heavily against one of the machines. She'd even found the strength to summon the bloodsword again, somehow. In the next instant, the vertically-slit pupils of her golden eyes widened in shock, and she hurled the sword like a javelin. It flew past Shido's shoulder, and as he turned to follow its path he saw it tear through the misty form of the night breed which unlike its spawn had been rising free from its defeated host. A wail seemed to issue from the creature, and then it dissipated, slain.

In the next instant, Riho gave a low moan and tumbled over in a dead faint, completely spent. Shido caught her before she struck the floor, cradling her slight form easily in his arms.

"Come on, Shido, we've got to get out of here," Yayoi said. She was right; even then flames were licking up the walls, no doubt started by the various machines broken during the fight. With Yayoi on his heels, he raced up the stairs, through the house and out onto the lawn, where he sent Riho down onto the cool grass.

"Why did you do that?" he asked her. "You didn't have the strength to make any more attacks, not with an injury like that."

If he expected an answer, he didn't get one. She just lay there, still and quiet.

"Oh, man," Guni said, flitting over to them. "She isn't...the little pipsqueak isn't..."

Shido brushed his fingertips against her cheek.

"She used up the last of her energy in killing the breed," he said. "There's nothing left to heal herself."

Yayoi pulled a small Swiss Army knife from her pocket and opened the blade.

"Then we need to make sure she gets more, now."

She slid the blade across her left palm, wincing as she did so. She'd cut a bit deep, but she needed for blood to flow freely. Yayoi knelt next to Riho's head and extended her hand, letting the blood drip while Shido opened Riho's mouth to accept it. It seemed to go on for a long time but Shido could see that the girl's body was accepting the blood, absorbing it. Slowly, the terrible wound in her abdomen began to close over, the skin drawing together, the blood of her own that she'd lost actually being drawn back into herself.

Riho's eyelids fluttered; when they lifted her eyes were still the burning gold of the vampire. All the energy she had was focused on preserving life; there was none to spare for preserving a human semblance.

"Mr...Shido? Are you...all right?" she asked.

"Yes, I am. We all are. You destroyed the breed."

"I'm...glad..." Riho's voice was more like a sigh than speech. She closed her eyes and let her head sag to the ground again.

"Is she--?" Yayoi began.

"She'll be find," Shido said tenderly. "She just needs to rest, now."

"You sound pretty relieved," Yayoi told him, grinning. "Sounds like you really are serious about her."

"Yayoi, you know how I feel."

"No, I know how _she_ feels. You vampire playboy types are harder to read. Now I'm sure you return her feelings, not just decided to accept them because you feel responsible for her." She fumbled with her handkerchief, trying to stanch the wound. "Ow! I hope I don't need stitches for this. Those little bite marks are a lot easier to deal with."

She looked back at the house. The fire had worked its way up from the cellars and the light of the flames could be seen through the windows. She made the emergency call, then put her phone away.

"It's hard to believe," she said. "Two generations of people had their dreams of a new discovery come to ruin here."

"You're forgetting the breed itself. It had the same dream, to find a way to give new life to those lost in the darkness--and it wrought its own destruction by pursuing that dream, just like the humans it seduced."

"Shido..."

He picked up Riho, cradling her sleeping body in his arms, lifting her so that his cheek pressed against hers.

"Let's go home."

As he started towards Yayoi's car, he looked down at the slight figure he held. He couldn't help but wonder, was she just another expression of that same dream? An attempt by Shido to light the way in his own darkness?

And if so, was his attempt doomed to be as futile as those in the burning house behind him?


End file.
